The answer to the above question becomes a tricky affair when you realise that history-writers in India can be very selective about what they choose to term history and what they don’t. A friend pointed out last night that perhaps the reason the Godhra riots continue to occupy so much space in Indian public discourse is that it was the first ever instance of communal violence televised by our mass media. It is nobody’s case that Godhra didn’t deserve attention, but when one goes to the extent of calling it the “worst ever” communal violence in the history of modern India, there are somethings that do need to be cleared up.

That is exactly what this piece by Kanchan Gupta published in Rediff.com in 2005 does. In order to get a hang of the problems India faces, it is important to have a proper perspective on matters as sensitive as communal violence. Over-the-top hyperbole painting things in black and white does not make for a useful environment to do so.

More often than not we come across claims of ‘thousands of Muslims butchered by Hindu fanatics in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.’ This is a lie that has been repeated ad nauseam since that terrible day when Hindus travelling by the Sabarmati Express were roasted alive after their coach was set ablaze by Muslim fanatics. It has been repeated the most by India’s Marxists who subscribe to the Goebbelsian tactic of repeating a lie till in the popular perception it comes to be identified as the truth. And, it is on the strength of such contrived truth that the Marxists make preposterous claims. For instance, the claim made in a recent editorial in the CPI-M propaganda journal People’s Democracy that the communal violence in Gujarat was ‘the worst in modern Indian history.’